


No Civilizing Hides Our Animal Impulses

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, F/M, Vampire Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-22 15:24:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8290829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: What if I don’t want you to get over it? she asks, and he knows the answer.
  Then you’re digging your own grave, princess.
Or, Frank is a vampire, Laurel isn’t, and nothing ends particularly well for anyone.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Realistically? Idk how much sense this fic actually makes; I just wanted to write vampire Frank porn and angst. Sue me.
> 
> This begins in season one in the pilot but is also really AU and doesn’t include Sam/Lila dying/a lot of other side plots. And it’s also AU in the fact that it, y’know. Includes literal vampires. 
> 
> Title comes from the IAMX song ‘Animal Impulses.’ Enjoy!!

He’s seen centuries.

He’s been old all his life, long as he can remember; he’s never felt young. He lost track of the years years ago, figured there was no real reason to keep count. Philly born and bred, to a family long dead and buried six feet under. Bootlegger in the 20’s. Mafioso in the 50’s. Gunrunner in the 70’s. Annalise’s dog since God knows when. A jack of every black market trade there is. A veritable Renaissance man.

A regular Da Vinci. And from what Annalise has told him about the guy Frank figures he and Leo probably would've been regular drinking buddies back in the day.

But that was a few centuries before his time.

It’s a cold sort of existence, this thing, this state of being; living half-alive. Living without life, and if he could remember different he thinks he’d probably miss what it felt like before, how feeling felt. _Really_ feeling, not the kind of dulled, deadened emotion left to him now, these pale hands that can touch but not _feel_. He doesn’t sleep – doesn’t need to. All he knows is one perpetual, hellish state of wakefulness. Wakefulness, and more wakefulness, and days that blur together like gory watercolors.

Wakefulness, and bloodlust. Those are all he knows.

He’s strategic when he feeds; he doesn’t kill, doesn’t have to do that either. Always women, most of them students, easily accessible and willing and warm. Most only once, some twice, a precious few three times – but he never dares more than that, never dares to weaken them past that point, always makes up some excuse why they won’t work out, gets a drink thrown in his face or a kick in the groin, and moves on. The sex doesn’t hurt, either. Sometimes he thinks the sex is all that keeps him sane.

Add that to the list. Wakefulness. Bloodlust. Sex. He’s a bit of a cliché: the womanizing vampire. Incubus in a three-piece suit, all old Hollywood glamour and slick hair.

He revels in it. He may be dead but he sure as hell makes it look good.  

He’s seen centuries. Hundreds of years, hundreds of women, a long unintelligible blur of faces and bodies and breasts and necks. All of them no more than sustenance. All of them meaningless.

Until the day Laurel Castillo comes crashing into his life at full force, and he starts to think maybe this whole immortality thing has a purpose after all.

 

~

 

She’s seen all of twenty-four years.

She’s different than the others, though; the other students, and Frank knows it when she looks him square in the eyes, jaw set, eyes steely, unflinching, and calls him a _misogynistic ass_. She smells sweeter, too, but with a hint of danger to her.

A tinge of darkness.

He’s intrigued, immediately, and so he picks her; of course he does. Bonnie rolls her eyes, knowing his affinity for pretty girls, and mutters some comment under her breath about how he better not go feeding off of another one of their interns, “because they’re here to do paperwork, Frank, not be your personal blood banks.” And truth is he doesn’t intend to, though the title _Frank’s girl_ that Annalise and the others oh-so-affectionately bestow upon Laurel makes it seem inevitable. Makes _them_ seem inevitable.

The night they kiss for the first time, after the mistrial and Laurel’s stunt with the jury, it’s almost overwhelming.

The heightened senses are a gift, and in situations like this, a godawful kind of curse. She’s sweet – sweeter than sugar, and there’s that hint of darkness flashing behind her eyes but there’s also so much _good_. Purity. Kindness and idealism and potential. It hits him hard, the heady scent of her, scent of her skin and flowing blood, powerful and pungent and so distinctly _Laurel_ , making that too-familiar stirring commence beneath his skin. That itch. The _urge_. He burns when he touches her and it’s a heavy, sweet burn, and he wonders if she can feel the abnormal coldness of his skin, the unnatural glint in his eyes, the heartbeat that should be thumping in his chest but isn’t. He grips her hand, crushing his mouth against hers, not manhandling her but not handling her overly gently either, and she makes soft little sounds and sighs against his lips that drive him on, drive him off the deep end.

And hell – who’s he kidding? He’s a fucking modern-day vampire. He went off the deep end a long time ago.

It’s intoxicating, and it’s torture, and it takes every scrap of willpower in him not to shove her up against the wall right then and there, pierce her jugular and drink her down like honey and let that sweet essence of her flow down his throat. And feed. Feed. _Feed,_ God, it’d be so _easy_.

No. _No._

He knows she wouldn’t resist; they never do – even though any rational person would shove him away the instant he bit her, most likely kick him in the pants and run screaming. But they aren’t rational. It’s not hypnotism in a literal sense but it’s something else, some force he exerts unconsciously, keeping his victims willing, pliable; some aphrodisiac. He may be exerting it now, without even realizing it, and she’s so close, just a few inches lower, lips on her neck, finding that delicious fluttering of her pulse point, and-

_Feed. Drink. Blood. Feed._

_No._ No.

But then she breaks away, and looks him in the eyes, flushed and breathless but strikingly resolute, razor-sharp, and all at once it’s clear that if there’d been a spell, some aura of control exuding from him, she sure as hell hadn’t been under it. She’s not weak-willed by any means, and he knows it then. Not pliable. Not _easy prey_.

“I have a boyfriend,” Laurel tells him, and grabs her purse, leaving him with the words hanging heavy in the air – and Frank knows right then he doesn’t want her to be easy prey, or prey at all. Not in his heart, or his head.

His body is telling him different, though.

 

~

 

“You like her,” Annalise observes one afternoon, as she catches him giving Laurel a particularly long, lingering look from across the room, as she smiles at something Wes had said – small and subdued, but beautiful, just barely exposing her teeth. A quiet smile; quiet, like the rest of her. The wallflower in full bloom.

Frank furrows his brow, starts to open his mouth to protest, but before he can Annalise continues.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” is all he advice she gives him. And he nods – even though he can’t even remotely promise her he won’t, because he’s notoriously stupid and if he hasn’t gotten smart after a few centuries of living he’s pretty sure by now he never will.

He goes out that night, and hunts. And drains a bit more blood than usual from a girl with long dark hair and blue eyes, and tries to pretend her face and scent and _everything_ isn’t all wrong.

 

~

 

He’s secretly relieved when she tells him to stay away, and at the same time it tears his entire cold, dead heart from his chest, black arteries and withered ventricles and all.

Frank knows it’s for the best if he keeps away, and not just for the reasons Laurel believes. She thinks he’s bad for her because he’s the bad boy type, and that’s true because he is but he’s also truly fucking _dangerous_. Deadly. He could kill her, suck her bone dry if he can’t control himself. He could. He can. He _will,_ if he gets close enough and the opportunity presents itself; he knows he will.

He’s fucking stupid, and he’s accepted this about himself. Turns out centuries of living allow for quite a lot of introspection. 

He has all the appearances of a gentleman, but inside there’s that primal, lurking, bone-deep urge. Insatiable thirst. Unquenchable. It’s more potent than hunger, though he can’t remember what hunger for human food feels like. It makes his world pulse red around the edges, makes his body throb, veins pulse like a grid of electric wires. It’s agony too, setting him all aflame and there’s nothing pleasant about that kind of burning, like a junkie jonesing for a hit, always on the cusp of withdrawal, living on the brink of madness.

He knows he will. He’ll feed from her if he gets too close. And he can’t. He won’t do that to her. He couldn’t.

He _could_.

It sucks to keep his distance, sucks so fucking much, but he manages. He hunts, more than usual, lacking his usual suavity and finesse and with just a tad bit more chaos. The next is a blonde woman at a bar in Fishtown whose name he can’t remember, but her blood is sufficiently warm, if not a little sour – not because there’s anything wrong with her, but by simple virtue of the fact that she isn’t _Laurel_ , and it isn’t Laurel’s blood, and it isn’t Laurel.

 _Laurel. Laurel._ Her voice is all he can hear, at all hours of the day. If he slept he’d dream of her. He wants her. Craves her. Wants to feed from her and fuck her through the mattress and simultaneously wants to do precisely neither of those things, because it’ll only end badly for her, getting mixed up with him. If he has her once…

He won’t be able to stay away, if he has her once. The only alternative? Is not having her at all.

Thankfully, Laurel seems to be intent on making that choice for him.

“She’s thinking about quitting, y’know,” Rebecca tells him late one night, striding over smug as ever to where he sits behind Bonnie’s desk.

Frank plays dumb, flips closed the file he’d been reading, though there’s a knowing look in Rebecca’s eyes that leads him to believe she knows _he_ knows exactly what she’s talking about.

“Who?”

“You _know_ who,” she replies, leaning against the doorway separating the living room from the open area of Bonnie’s makeshift office. “Your goody-two-shoes girlfriend. She wants to quit, go work at legal aid with her boring, brooding boy toy. And… let me guess: she can’t resist your bearded allure, and that’s why she wants to put some space between you two, right? The whole student-teacher thing’s kinda cliché in this day and age don’t you think?”

“Don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about.”

Rebecca hums, amused. “Well, whatever you say. But my intel’s solid, so you owe me one, beardo. And one day I’ll come to collect.”

Frank gives her a look, feigning disinterest when really he can feel that giant gaping cavity where his heart should reside aching, clenching and squeezing like it’s trying to smother him, or collapse from the inside out. His eyes find Laurel across the room; standing by the stairs talking to Prom Queen, and gathering her bag and coat and making to leave for the night. And he thinks about how he should absolutely fucking _under no circumstances_ follow her, how he should let her go, let her walk out of his life for good where he can never have her, where he can never _hurt_ her.

He shouldn’t follow. He should do anything in the world _except_ follow.

So, he follows.

“Hey,” he calls out, just as he steps out onto the porch after her. She turns to him, cheeks red from the November cold, swallowed up by her long tweed coat and as delectable as anything he’s ever seen in his life. Her scent is stronger now, flowing over him in waves; olfactory overload. He plays it cool. Of course he does. “It’s your last day, you’re not gonna say goodbye?”

Confusion flickers in her eyes, though it’s hard to see in the dim lamplight. He leans against one of the posts, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Rebecca told me about you goin’ to work at legal aid.”

She turns, clearly not knowing what to say to that, and takes a few steps in the other direction, and he thinks, _Yes, good. Go. Go now. Get away_ – before she spins around to face him again.

“I’m considering going to legal aid. I haven’t decided yet.”

 _Go. Quit. Get out. Now._ But Frank walks closer, instead of walking away, and screws himself more with every inch. “Is this about me bein’ a jerk? ‘Cause… I’ll stop. Don’t throw away a great opportunity ‘cause of me.”

He feels like a mad man, saying all the wrong things that somehow sound exactly right to his twisted ears. Somehow he calms himself, sinking down onto the railing, wanting nothing more than to bark at her to go, but at the same time wanting nothing more than for her to _stay_.

_Don’t go. Don’t leave._

_Go. Go, while you still can. God, please go…_

The voices war; angel and devil on his shoulder.

As is generally the case, the devil wins out.

“It was one stupid kiss. ‘S it,” he tells her, voice low, more wide open than he thinks he’s been in years. Decades. His words are laden with resignation, and yet somehow laced with hope – though if there’s ever been any creature beyond hope, beyond salvation, he knows it’s him. “There’s nothin’ else between us.”

“Really?” she asks, and there’s a hint of a smile in her eyes, those eyes that are screaming loud and clear that she’s not buying any of his bullshit because she never does, because _God_ , she’s so beautiful and strong and everything. “You mean that? There’s nothing?”

He’s silent, a moment. _Tell her yes._

 _Tell her no. There’s not nothing. There’s_ so much more _than nothing._

“’Course I don’t mean it,” he says, earnest. He gets up from the railing and walks over to her, stopping close but not too close, because he’s afraid if he gets any closer he’s going to lose it, actually, truly lose it. Her smell is stronger now. It’s all over, in the air; blood and perfume and sweetness. It’s downright _sinful_. “I think about you all the time, it’s friggin’ annoying. But I’ll get over it. So don’t quit ‘cause of me. I’ll be… normal again, soon.” He pauses. His voice catches in his throat. He can feel his bones humming, crawling like insects beneath his skin. “Promise.”

Silence, again. He wills her to run. To leave, right this instant, and never look back, for her own good. He’s a monster. A literal monster. _It’s a fitting punishment for a monster. To want something so much—to hold it in your arms — and know beyond a doubt you will never deserve it._ And Frank isn’t particularly partial to poetry but he is partial to books, has read a whole goddamn lot of books over the course of two centuries of free time, and he remembers reading that somewhere, once. He does not deserve her. Doesn’t deserve jack shit.

 _Monster._ The word is ingrained in his skin, part of his identity as much as his name. And he’s just about to turn, and head back inside, and try to forget he ever knew Laurel Castillo when-

“What if I don’t want you to get over it?”

A simple question. Softly-spoken, with wide blue eyes and pink cheeks, her breath turning to fog in the cold around them. It breaks him, then, snips that last thread of willpower that’d been holding him back, restraining him; that beast at heart. The bloodlust boiling in his brain.

 _What if I don’t want you to get over it?_ she asks, and he knows the answer.

_Then you’re digging your own grave, princess._

He’s upon her in seconds, ravenous. He kisses her, kisses to consume, and somehow it feels even better than before, like merely touching her has awakened his dormant nerve endings, reinvigorated his body; an unholy sort of resurrection. He backs Laurel up towards the railing, then lifts her up and settles her down onto it, and it’s precarious and stupid, but he honest-to-God doesn’t think he’ll survive the drive home, thinks he’ll go mad if he doesn’t shove aside her panties and hike up her skirt and have her right here, right now.

So he does.

It’s filthy, immodest. All different kinds of perverse. This location, in particular, is probably a bad idea for the ages. Laurel is panting against his mouth, trying to murmur something about how _they can’t do this here, God, Frank, we can’t_ , but he pays no attention, instead reaching down, yanking on his zipper until it comes undone, and freeing his cock, hard and aching, all the dead blood in his body rushing down to it in seconds. He thinks maybe he can distract himself with this, with _real_ lust instead of bloodlust, that maybe he can tamp down that urge and refocus it onto his dick – but then Laurel is tilting her head back, eyelids fluttering shut as he maneuvers the crotch of her lace panties to the side, and he catches a whiff of her blood, pulsating there, separated from him only by that pale, tortuously thin veil of flesh.

The blood in her neck. The most abundant. Sweetest. So close.

Feed. _Feed._

 _Stop._ Stop!

He’s almost inside her. He has his cock in hand, ready to place at her entrance, bobbing heavily between her legs, between the two of them. He can feel the heat of her cunt, that lake of fire, and she’s trying to urge him on, begging him, gripping his hips to try to get him to thrust forward, fuck into her, but not having much luck. She’s everything he’s ever wanted and more – more than just a feeding. More than just prey. He doesn’t know how that happened, how it came to be that Laurel Castillo would be so much more than a girl to him. A goddess. A goddess, full of blood. Begging to be fucked. _Drained._ And if he fucks her, does this now, he knows he’ll be gone, though part of him already knows he’s past the point of no return, and even fancying the idea that he could somehow reverse this course of action is ludicrous.

He has to stop. He needs to stop, God, but he can _feel_ her, he’s so close, he-

“Do it,” Laurel breathes, and her eyes flutter open. She gnaws on her lower lip, shifting on the rough wood of the railing, writhing, keening. “Do it, doit, Frank, c’mon, hurry-”

_You don’t know what you’re asking. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into._

He almost says the words. Wants desperately to warn her away

Instead, in one, short, rough thrust, he enters her.

He’s gone, the instant he does. All he’s cognizant of is blood; the sensation of blood pulsing in his cock, the blood pounding between her legs, in her inner walls, engorging her clit, swelling her folds. She’s so ridiculously, impossibly tight around him, and he has to choke down a groan, and pray that no passersby happen upon them like this: pants down and skirt hiked up and all different kinds of indecent. Laurel mewls, tightening her grip on his back, sputtering some intelligible string of words, speaking in tongues. She tightens her legs around him, and he reaches down, placing one hand underneath her thigh to hold it up, tugging her closer, and he pulls out before burying him up to the hilt again, almost bottoming out. She squeals, and he thinks maybe he’s hurt her, gone too fast, been too rough – but then the sound bleeds into a moan, and he knows he hasn’t.

Not yet, anyway.

His world is tinged with red. He feels rabid. He tries to resist. He really does. And that lasts all of two seconds – and before he knows it he’s leaning into her neck, laying kisses there, sucking her sweat-sweeted skin into his mouth and listening to her respond with a fluttering sigh. So close. So _close_. It’s sensory overload, again. It’s agony.

_Feed. Feed. Feed. Yes. Do it. Do it._

He tries to resist. Tries, and tries – all the way up to the exact second he falters, and moves in lightning-fast, and sinks his fangs straight into her jugular.

Laurel flinches. Irrationally, for a second, he wonders if maybe it won’t work on her, the hypnotism, that biological programming; if she’ll push him away and go running, and he almost hopes she will but she doesn’t. Instead she moans, low and long and from deep in her chest, and God, fucking _hell_ , Frank knows she doesn’t fully comprehend what he’s doing but it seems almost to be driving her on. He can feel a rush of wetness on his cock, and her head lolls to the side, giving him unrestrained access, not putting up even the weakest of fights.

He almost comes right then, right there, at the first long pull he takes of her.

To humans Frank knows blood tastes metallic, sharp – not appetizing, not like it is for him. It’s sweet, tangy, unique to every person; some stronger than others, some more diluted. Once or twice, when he’d drained someone close to the end, it’d been bitter, foul like spoiled milk – but not Laurel. Laurel’s is fresh, so fresh it’s like biting into a ripe tomato and letting the juices dribble down his chin. Saccharine, overwhelming in its purity, and his first sips are long and greedy.

He can’t help it. Nothing’s ever felt so _good._

“Frank,” she breathes, whimpering, the delicate muscles of her cunt clenching around him, drawing him deeper. Her whole body seems to be drawing him closer, wanting him, craving him and through the madness and the haze all Frank wants to scream at her is _Good fucking God, don’t you know what I’m doing?_ but he can’t. Won’t.

He keeps going. Hates himself for it, but keeps drinking her, with renewed vigor, relishing the feeling of her flowing down his throat, like the blood of Christ in those fancy golden cups he’d sipped from in church as a kid, but this isn’t the blood of any savior – this is the blood of a goddess; an angel, and he’s destroying her, as good as ripping off her wings. And he can’t bring himself to give even the slightest, tiniest, most inconsequential fuck.

It isn’t long before he comes. Before they both do.

He comes with a feral growl, spilling inside her, his lips still suckling at the twin puncture wounds on her neck – and it strikes him for a second how stupid this is, how he should’ve worn a condom, how he should never have done _any_ of this in the first place, ever. But that tiny thought, that little angel on his shoulder, that last remaining dying, wheezing bit of his conscience, is silenced by the burn inside him; that delicious release, all pent-up and finally bursting free. His vision goes white, red blurring into blinding white, and he gives a half-roar against her neck, and finally, somehow, tears his mouth from her, wiping it off with one hand.

There’s blood on his lips. His fangs. Dripping down his jaw. It’s the only time he feels alive, when he’s like this, after feeding.

It’s the only time he’s entirely sure who he _is._

He barely notices Laurel, but when he’s finally able to re-center his vision he finds her breathless and weak, about to tip backwards off the railing. There’s that haze in her eyes – lust-haze. They all look like that, after: happy, blissfully unaware. He hadn’t noticed her come, had selfishly made no real conscious effort to get her off, but judging by the shallowness of her breath and her loopy little grin he thinks she must have done all right for herself. Her neck is still bleeding, a slow trickle. It always clots quickly; Frank knows she’s not in danger of bleeding out.

Not bleeding out on her own, at least. But with him around it’s a whole other fucking story.

 _Stupid. Selfish. Look what you’ve done to her. God._ God.

When he comes down the remorse creeps in, inexorable and lurking. The guilt, and sometimes he feels guilty but usually he doesn’t – but he does, now. And still it’s hard to feel very much guilt when her blood is on his tongue, and his cock is still buried inside her, and she’s looking at him, looking very much like she wants more. Another round. Two. They’ve waited what feels like so long for this, and he only met her a month ago and already she feels so familiar, like he knew her in another life, every cell and atom in his body coded to recognize her.

He should go, now.

Then again he’s never been good at doing the things he should.

“Come home with me,” he says, as he pulls out and tucks himself away, wiping the blood off his mouth onto his sleeve. It’s like Laurel doesn’t even see it, like her mind doesn’t register that part – the sex, yes, but not the feeding, and he knows it doesn’t. He kisses her, long and rough, and when he pulls back he can see her blood gleaming on her own lips, shimmering black in the darkness. “Let me take you home.”

Laurel nods, mesmerized. Eyes wide and pupils blown up, dialated, a bit too much to be natural, and she nods against a moment, hopping off the railing, smoothing her skirt down, and making her way down off the porch towards his car, all unsteady gait and wobbly knees.

Frank follows. Mouth full of blood.

Calm. Sated.

 

~

 

She shows up to work the next day pale.

Pale, and tired, and she’d been pale-skinned before, maybe, but the change is noticeable; she’s gaunt, wan. Eyes hazy and too big for her face, always looking as if they’re threatening to flutter shut. He thought he’d been careful. Thought he hadn’t drained her enough to hurt her.

He’d been so fucking _stupid_. Reckless.

Laurel doesn’t seem to get it. She won’t; they never do. It’s that biological programming again, written in her code, not to register the tiredness, not to ponder the origins of the twin puncture wounds on her neck. Not to wonder _why_ , what’s wrong with her, and he won’t do it again – ever. He’ll control himself. He can. Will. He will not destroy her; he’d sooner die than do that because she’s good, pure, full of light, and he’s the antithesis of all that; a giant gaping black hole, consuming everything even remotely good around him. Like cancer. Plague.

Bonnie looks suspicious. Annalise, too. They don’t remark on it.

Not the first time, at least. Not until it keeps happening.

He takes her home Tuesday night too, and all but slams her down into his mattress, climbs atop her, and she’s as rabid as he is; some beast unleashed in her though her movements are weaker, her body noticeably more frail after the first time. And it’s rough, the first few rounds – and he tries to stop himself, stamp down the urge, and again he fails, his teeth sinking into the delectably soft skin of her neck, feeling warm blood bloom beneath his lips like gruesome little roses, diving in and drinking deep and listening to her moan, hips bucking under him, legs splayed wide.

Fucking her. Feeding from her. It’s heaven.

But it’s different, with Laurel. Used to just be fucking for fucking’s sake, and maybe part of it still is, but they talk, after – actual, honest to God pillow talk; something Frank isn’t used to _or_ particularly fond of, and hasn’t done much in all of his two hundred years. He likes it with her, though. Likes looking into her eyes, at her skin, bathed in moonglow, pale and breathtakingly beautiful. He’s been all over the world. Seen every kind of woman – hell, every kind of _person_ , and somehow he doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone quite like her.

There’s no words to describe her; she defies words altogether. Can’t be constrained by them. She’s something else.

She’s _his_.

“You know,” she remarks one night a week later, as they lay sweaty and sticky between his million thread-count sheets, sipping Italian wine as red as blood, “maybe… I was wrong about you, at first.”

He quirks an eyebrow, grins. “Yeah? How so?”

“Maybe you’re not such an ass after all.” She pauses, and laughs under her breath. “Bonnie seems to think you’re a very sensitive guy, actually.”

His smirk dips down a bit. “Bon? What’d she say?”

“It was before we started. It was weird, she pulled me aside one night. Said something about… how I should stop leading you on, that she saw the way you looked at me. That she’d tell Annalise we were screwing and get me fired.” Laurel shakes her head, taking a sip from her glass, and her lips come away red, red as the wounds on her neck, still dripping faintly. “She was really adamant about keeping me away from you. And – what? Don’t tell me you two were having some torrid office love affair.”

“Bon? God no. She just…” He drifts off. He knows perfectly well what her intentions were with that conversation, can’t say he blames her for them, but he shrugs off the thought. “Bon just likes her theatrics. Don’t worry about gettin’ fired. And, I mean, if it means anything, least you got one of your bosses on your side.”

“Oh, so you’re my boss now?”

Frank shrugs, and sets aside his glass, nodding at the bedroom around them. “In bed, at least.”

That earns him another scoff, followed by a light smack on the bicep. “All right, you know what? I take it back; you _are_ an ass.”

Frank laughs, and leans in, kissing her breasts until she’s giggling helplessly and almost spilling her wine. And his mouth tastes like that wine, and it tastes like her blood too, and he’s so happy to be with her right then, so selfishly happy and delightfully insane, because being with her makes him feel almost good. Almost worthy of love. Almost – and it is a _strong_ almost – alive.

It’s been three times, now, that he’s fed from her. Next time he won’t. Next time he’ll stop, stop this, stop seeing her, stop killing her, stop all of it.

Next time. Always next time – until the day comes that there isn’t a _next time_ anymore.

 

~

 

His apartment. Or hers. He’s not sure which, not sure it matters. It’s late at night, days later, after work. He has her pressed up against the wall just inside the doorway, hands roaming greedily, shucking his coat and then hers. She’s weaker than she’s ever been, dragging herself around like a million-pound bag of bricks, deathly pale and exhausted. The others have been asking at work if she feels okay, if she needs to take the day off. Time after time she assures them she’s fine, and he knows she believes it.

And she’s not. And she’s dying; dying, because he is, quite literally, draining the life out of her every other night, because he can’t stop, because he got close once and lost all control. Because he’s Hades and she’s Persephone, and he’s dragging her down with him like he’s always done, like he’ll always do, because realistically it’s _all_ he’s capable of doing.

It’s that thought that makes him pull away suddenly, shaking his head.

“Laurel, wait.” he manages to say, breathless. She leans forward slightly, trying to recapture his lips and frowning when he stops her. “Hey, hey, stop. We gotta stop.”

Her eyes are hazy, eyelids drooping, grip on him frail – but still, she asks, “What? Why?”

“It’s… I don’t just mean now. We gotta stop. For good. I’m not…” He swallows thickly. “I’m not good for you, okay?”

“Frank, what’re you talking about?”

“You shouldn’t be with me,” is all he says. “Go back to legal aid guy, whatever his name was. Be with somebody like him. He’s a good guy.”

“What, and you’re not?”

He clenches his jaw, as she moves in closer again, a little heat-seeking missile of a girl. “Laurel…”

“I don’t want to be with him,” she breathes, and stumbles forward a bit, unsteady on her legs as she is. Weak. Growing inevitably weaker. “I want you.”

He swallows, again. “No, you don’t, Laurel-”

“I do,” she echoes, and raises her face to his, pressing her sweet lips down on his; sweet doom, his destruction, and her own. She kisses him, unaware, so trusting and so good, God, so _good_. “What? You don’t want me?”

He does. The want bubbles beneath his skin, magma in his veins. He wishes he knew what it is about her that does this to him, bewitches him like this; what it is that makes her so different, and makes him so unable to stay away. He has to stop this – now. Tonight, before she runs out of nights. He has to stop.

He’ll stop tomorrow. They’ve got tonight.

So he lets her pull him into the bedroom, and lay him down. Lets her walk straight into her own death like leading a lamb to the slaughter, doesn’t so much as lift a finger to stop her. And he feeds – feeds, and tries to ignore the bitter taste of her blood; the taste of death, and the way her sighs grow softer beneath him, her fingers trembling, body weakening. Everything weakening.

 _Stop stop you fucking idiot just_ stop-

He’s always been Hades: creature from hell, evil incarnate. Monster. He’s always hated himself and he hates himself now more than ever, and hates that the thought doesn’t make him want to stop – not in the least. He wishes he’d never become like this. Made to _want_ like this. Controlled like a puppet by his own bloodlust.

It’s times like this he wishes Sam had just left him for dead.

He holds her, after. Feels for her pulse point, and feels it still fluttering – though it’s decidedly weaker, erratic. And something aching turns over inside his chest, and he knows this has to be the last time, knows if he does this again, can’t stop himself, he’ll kill her. It’s over. Has to be over – like all the rest before, she won’t be any different. Annalise told him once that people like them aren’t meant to love, aren’t meant to hold things dear to them; cursed with solitude. They gave that up for immortality and it’s the price they pay, and he’ll have to live with that.

And he can. She’s just a girl. Nothing significant. Nothing to him.

Nothing. _Everything._

He leaves in the morning, before she wakes up. No note. He can’t give her a goodbye, offer some kind of explanation; he can’t explain something she’ll never understand. It’s better like this: clean break. Cold turkey. Laurel Castillo was blood, sustenance, that’s all she ever was, and if he has to avoid her until this year is out, endure the agony of being so close yet so far, then he will do that.

He will do that, for her own good. He had no damn business falling for her in the first place.

He leaves, and goes to the office, burying himself in paperwork to alleviate the burn. And waits for her to come in too, ask him where he’d went, why he’d left without saying goodbye, left her to wake up alone. Waits.

He waits. She never comes.

 

~

 

She won’t answer her phone.

She won’t answer his calls, or texts. The others try too, even Annalise – and still nothing. If she was sick she would’ve called in; she wouldn’t have forgotten. Something’s wrong, he can feel it in his bones, smell doom in the air like an approaching storm. If he’d been wrong, if she’d been weaker than he thought… if last night was finally the last straw…

 _No_.

He takes a detour to her place during his lunch hour, and knocks on the door; once, twice, waiting for her to answer. More waiting. His stomach sinks further with every second, roiling with dread, tying itself up into knots. If he had a functional heart he imagines it’d be beating out of his chest.

“Laurel? Hey, open up! It’s me.”

He calls out. Raps harder. Nothing. A minute or so passes, until he reaches into his briefcase and retrieves a loose paperclip, straightening it out and sliding it into the lock with practiced expertise. He presses and fumbles with it until he hears a definite _click_ , the lock unlatching and the old wooden door creaking open with an eerie squeal.

“Laurel?”

She’s nowhere to be seen – not in her living room or kitchenette, at least, and so he ventures deeper, something welling heavily in his throat, down the hallway, toward her bedroom. Time slows down to some agonizing turtle-speed, the world around him fuzzy and surreal, not like a dream but some sort of hellish nightmare. He feels the sudden weight of the universe around him, all impossibly heavy and sinking down. Slow. Too slow. He rounds the corner, not breathing, not even consciously moving beyond the half-robotic motions of his legs.

He doesn’t see her, at first.

Then he does.

She’s on the floor, leaning up against the dresser. Pale, white as a ghost. Half-sitting, half-slouching, eyes shut. Somehow she’d managed to dress herself in a t-shirt and sweatpants, but from a distance he can’t tell if she’s even still breathing, and a spike of fear shoots through him, an electric shock straight to his brain stem.

_No. No no no no no._

“Laurel,” he breathes out the word, the region where his heart should be clamping up, vicelike. He goes to her, falls down to his knees, and when he does he can see the sweat coating her forehead, neck; all of her, all _over_ her. He places a hand on her arm, nudging her lightly, trying desperate to turn her towards him. “Laurel… Laurel, hey, wake up-”

She stirs, faintly, at the sound of his voice. She’s breathing – he can see she’s breathing, and relief washes over him before it morphs straight back into panic, hard as a kernel in his stomach. He can hear her heart beating, not slow and steady but rapid; a frantic thumping, the muscle trying and failing to pump blood it doesn’t have. She’s breathing fast too, forehead cold and clammy, muttering indistinctly under her breath.

Stupid. So reckless. Why had he been so fucking _reckless_? By now he should’ve fucking learned. Should’ve known better.

Shouldn’t known to stay the hell away from beautiful things that he’ll only ever destroy. 

“Frank,” she croaks, finally, when he places his hands on her cheeks and lowers himself down to her. Her eyes flutter open, but they won’t focus, bleary, with that terrifying yellow hue of death in them. The end. He can see the end in them, in her, knows what it looks like all so well. “Frank, what’s… What’s… I…”

“Look at me, _fuck_ , Laurel, just…” He exhales sharply, hands trembling, whole body quivering with dulled terror and guilty and disgust, as overwhelmed with emotion as he thinks he can be. “Stay awake for me, okay? Don’t go to sleep. Look at me. _Look at me_ , hey, Laurel…”

She mutters something again; something he can’t make out, then sucks in a wheezing breath, lifting her head weakly. “I can’t… move, what…” She drifts off, breathing heavy for a second, before she manages to choke out. “Why am I…”

“It’s gonna be okay,” he reassures her, though the words are hollow, meaningless. He swallows down the bile in his throat; wants to die, right then, if he was capable of dying. “’S all gonna be okay. Just… just don’t go to sleep. Stay with me. You hear me, Laurel? Don’t fall asleep on me.”

She doesn’t nod. Probably doesn’t hear him. Instead her head just lolls to one side again, her body all hunched in on itself, feeble, limp as a ragdoll. He tries to close his eyes to it, to the sickly pallor of death on her skin; the irreversible, damning kind. Tries to ignore the beating of her heart, fluttering fast as a rabbit’s. He knows the signs. Blood loss. Shock.

He knows the signs. He ignores them anyway.

 

~

 

He should, by all logic and reason, call 911.

But he’s a stupid asshole, always has been, so he calls Bonnie instead.

He doesn’t elaborate, just blurts out some garbled nonsense about _I went too far, Bon, I went too fucking far_ , and she’s there within half an hour. By then he’s moved Laurel to the bed, unconscious and fading fast, that heartbeat like a drum thudding in his ears; all he has to cling to. He paces, madly, while he waits. Prays, even though he knows from experience that God isn’t real, that there is no other side, no idyllic gates of paradise – nothing after the end besides darkness.

And he doesn’t want that darkness for Laurel. He’s known death and it’s cold, so cold it burns, and lonely. And she is light. She needs light, and she needs to _live_ , and fuck, he never should’ve gotten mixed up with her and developed misguided fucking high-school feelings for her because he knew how it was going to end all along. How it’s ended before; how it always does, when the dead fall in love with the living.  

Bonnie goes wild when she arrives.

“You idiot,” she spits, as she storms into the bedroom, feeling Laurel’s neck for her pulse where she lays on the bed, sprawled out with her arms at her sides. “Frank you stupid fucking _idiot_.”

“Bon-”

“Don’t _Bon_ me. Don’t even _talk_ to me right now! What the hell were you thinking? You sucked her dry; I don’t even know how she’s still breathing.” Bonnie exhales sharply, placing a hand on her forehead and sweeping a strand of sweaty hair back. “She’s in shock. She needs a transfusion, bad, but I don’t know if even that’ll save her – _God_ , Frank, what the _hell_ did you do to her?”

“I…” He falters, feeling just as stupid as he is. “I tried to stop, I tried to break things off-”

“You’ve always had shitty self-control.” Her voice is biting, words barbed. She draws back from Laurel, folding her arms. “Did you not think about what Annalise always says? What she’s told us for _years_? We don’t get attached to humans, Frank, and we definitely don’t date them! You feed and-”

“And you move on, yeah, I know,” he cuts in, clenching his jaw. “I was gonna end it, after last night, it was… The last time. I thought she’d be okay-”

“Well, she’s not,” Bonnie observes, ice-cold as ever, blue eyes sharp enough to cut. “I don’t think she’ll last the hour.”

“So we… get her to a hospital-”

“Oh, and what? Are _you_ gonna explain to the doctors how she’s lost half the blood in her body with hardly a scratch on her? You’re not taking her to the hospital; you know that. You’re not outing us.” A pause, pregnant and with the grey air of death lingering over them. Then: “You know what you have to do.”

He goes rigid at once. “Bon…”

“Turn her,” is all Bonnie says, plain and simple, “or she dies.”

“Turn her,” he spits, feral as a dog. “Like it’s that fucking simple?”

“You said you couldn’t stay away from her. Now she’ll be stuck with you for all eternity.” Bonnie glances back down at Laurel, the corners of her eyelids tugging down with something that almost looks like sorrow, though he knows any sorrow she feels is but a distant echo of normal human sadness. “Jesus, Frank, look what you did to her.”

“I can’t,” he manages, throat tightening, skin crawling at the thought. “Turn her. Bon, I can’t do that to her.”

“You can save her. Though… I wouldn’t consider it saving,” she remarks, almost with disinterest. She sighs, then looks back to him. “Your choice. Maybe it’d be merciful, letting her die. This life we live…”

Bonnie doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t have to; he knows what she means. This life they live that isn’t _life_ , not in any literal sense of the word. Bloodlust. Wakefulness. Existing. Never-ending. Laurel wouldn’t want this. Laurel would be miserable. But to let her die, watch her slip away, because of him, because of his own selfish desires…

He can’t do that, either. He owes her this. Owes her salvation – even though it isn’t salvation.

Even though _damnation_ sounds like much more accurate a word.

“I can’t,” is all he repeats, dumbly, like a child, though he’s done this before. Turned someone. It shouldn’t be different with Laurel.

It _is_ different with Laurel. Everything is.

“She’s running out of time,” Bonnie observes, and he knows it’s true, can hear the rapid beating of Laurel’s heart, struggling to compensate, shutting down along with her other internal organs like gruesome dominos one by one by one. “Should we be getting ready to bury another body or are you doing this?”

For a moment Frank just looks at her, at Bonnie; hardened and cold, and looking outwardly young but somehow, at the same time, far older than she should. He’s known her for decades. Knew her before she turned – when she wasn’t like this, jaded by all the death and depravity around him. She’s the closest thing to a sister he’s ever had – his folks and all his other loved ones have all passed on, vanished from his life, yet she’s been the one constant. Steady, like a sentinel.

He looks at her. Recognizes she’s right.

Then, he lets out a breath, and reaches down, grasping Laurel’s wrist, resigned.

It’s the fastest way to do this, he knows; venom right into her bloodstream. So he bites, sinks his fangs in down past her flesh, straight into the vein – but this time he doesn’t suck. Instead he lets the poison flow out of him, the action conscious and unconscious. Lethal. It’ll kill her, and it’s a painful, gory, godawful death. He remembers how it’d felt; like being on fire from the crown of his head to his feet and his toes, flesh being seared off his bones, acid eating at him all over. Necrosis. Living decay.

He draws back, after a moment, and lets her wrist drop down onto the sheets, limp and cold. Her breathing speeds up, shallow and short. Her heartbeat does too, hard as the thud of a war drum, warring against the poison in her veins – until all at once it ceases, goes silent, dead inside her.

Dead. Like the rest of her.

“It’s done,” Bonnie observes, a bit morose. Frank doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t think he can, just stares at her, and they’ve only just begun, maybe, but what he feels for her is deeper than it should be so soon, like she’s been written into his code from the very start, like it was destiny and fate, and he doesn’t believe in them, never has, but there had to be something. Something that brought her to him.

Something that damned her to have the misfortune of meeting him.

Bonnie leaves, and he stays, keeping vigil at her bedside, waiting for what he knows is the inevitable.

The sun sets. And before long, it begins.


	2. Part II

He stays up with her.

He stays, as she cries and sobs and moans, tossing and turning feverishly, every cell and atom in her body attacked and ripped open and eradicated, transformed. Her heart isn’t beating, and he can’t smell her anymore – her warm, distinctive human scent – but she’s very much alive, or at least… whatever he can call this state of theirs. Suspended animation, maybe. She’s alive, joining him in death, and he can feel it, feel her pain; that physic link between them materializing. He’s her maker. He’ll always be in her head, and she in his.

He already knows how much she’ll hate that.

As the sun comes up her cries die down and she goes still – and so he closes the blinds in her room, knowing she’ll be sensitive to the sun upon waking and knowing he should let her sleep in peace, for one last time. For a while she does just that: sleep. He stays seated at her bedside, and as a few rogue rays of sunlight peak through the curtains he sees, for the first time, the new unnatural pallor of her skin, and the bites on her neck, which have closed over and vanished as if they were never there at all. She’ll heal faster now, he knows. When she wakes up she’ll be thirsty, for something she doesn’t yet understand. Ravenous and reborn.

When she wakes up she’ll find out what he’s made her, and hate him, and he won’t blame her. _Never turn people unless you need to_ , Annalise has told him, time and time again, and he hadn’t needed to turn her. He’d been reckless. A fool. But maybe part of him had wanted this all along, some unseen, subconscious part, buried deep. Maybe he’d seen something in her; darkness like his own, mixed in with all her light.

He exhales sharply. _Stupid stupid stupid._

He’s in the living room with the blinds closed when she emerges at last, pale and shaky, legs as unsteady as a newborn foal. He turns when he hears her footsteps scraping across the carpet behind him and takes in the sight of her: small and all drawn in on herself, one hand placed on her forehead, eyes squinty, hair a rat’s nest. She looks like she has, quite literally, risen from the dead, and he can hear her thoughts buzzing in his head like the distant droning of insects; most indiscernible and faint now, but he knows they’ll become clearer, later, and stronger.

“Hey,” he greets, and has a flicker of a thought for a moment that he should’ve made her breakfast – then realizes that she’s hungry, sure, but not for the sort of food she’s used to.

“Hey,” she croaks, and winces, sucking in an unsteady breath. “I… What happened, last night? I feel…” She shakes her head, looking up at him, eyes full of confusion. “I feel weird.”

Frank hesitates. He has no idea how to put this, how he can possibly explain what’s happened. Who she is. Words alone don’t seem enough, can’t be enough, so he lets out a breath, squares his shoulders, and nods over at a mirror hanging on a nearby wall; how Annalise had showed him, demonstrated what he was to him ages ago, for the first time.

“Lemme show you something.”

Bewildered and weak, she follows. He comes to a stop before it, staring into the glass and finding nothing staring back; a sight he’s more than accustomed to. Laurel frowns when he does, hanging back.

“Frank… what is this?”

“Just look,” is all he says, lips pressed into a grim line. “C’mere.”

She hesitates, again.

Then she does.

She steps in front of him, positioning herself before the mirror. At first she’s confused, staring at it without a word – at the empty reflection where she should be, and _he_ should be behind her. Blinking, a few times, as if this is some sort of dream, illusion, sick joke, and it is, God it really is. She appears outwardly calm but her head is swimming, thoughts bouncing around in her skull at an almost overwhelming rate; too much to process, and he can feel it all, and she must be able to feel his too, and still she doesn’t make a move.

“What is…” She spins around, and backs away from him, horror written all over her face. She breathes out, shakily. “W-what is this? Why can’t I-”

“Laurel-”

“ _What are you_?” Laurel inhales sharply. “What-”

“Put you hand on your chest,” he tells her, calm, trying to steady his voice and keep his distance. “Where your heart is.”

“Wh-”

“Just… just do it.”

She does. She looks like she doesn’t know why she’s listening to him but she does, and when she feels the deadness there, the hollowness where her heart should be thumping beneath her fingertips, she looks up to him; eyes red-rimmed, whites blown up twice their size. Sick. She looks like she feels sick, like she might pitch herself forward onto her hands and vomit at any second.

“W-what are you?” she breathes, more timidly this time. “What did you… what did you do to me?”

“Laurel-”

They’re in her kitchenette, then, and quick as lightning Laurel reaches over to the block of knives resting on the counter and draws one – huge and gleaming silver, and extends it out at him, shaking visibly, teeth barred.

“Stay away from me,” she tries to hiss, but it comes out as more of a sputter; a plea. “Stay away! Don’t… don’t come any closer-”

He clenches his jaw, raising his voice. “You can’t kill me, okay? We don’t die. Not easy, anyway.”

“ _We_? What the hell do you mean _we_?”

“We’re dead, Laurel,” is all the explanation he gives, simple, and also at the same time not _simple_ at all. “Vampires. That’s what we are. What you are.”

“No,” she blurts out, features contorted with betrayal and confusion. She places her hand where her heart should be beating once more, willing the thing to restart somehow, like her touch can jolt it back to life, and she exhales all at once when it doesn’t heed her. “No, no, no, I’m not dead – I’m not _dead_ , I… vampires aren’t real, I-” She stops, suddenly, meeting his eyes and then looking down at her hands; pale hands. Dead hands. “You did this to me? You… _changed_ me?”

“I… Laurel, I’ll explain, just… put the knife down, please-”

“Why?” she spits, not acknowledging she’s even heard him. She raises her chin, defiant even through her tears. Strong again – inhumanly strong. “Tell me _why_!”

“I didn’t… mean to, look, I…” He breathes out, not knowing how to put this to avoid making himself look like an asshole, then quickly coming to the conclusion that no matter how he tells this story, he _is_ the asshole, the villain. “When we got together, I started… feedin’ on you. But – I was gonna stop, Laurel, I-”

She remembers the day before, then. Feeling weak, near dead, and he knows when she puts two and two together, can pinpoint the exact moment she makes the mental connection, like their synapses are fused; a linked network of wires no matter how much distance is between them.

“You killed me,” she says, eyes wide. “You… you _killed me_.”

“I… Laurel-”

“Why?” she demands. “Because you couldn’t _help_ yourself? B-because you didn’t have any self-control? I… all along, I remember… I felt tired, and… weak, all the time. But I never wondered why.” She inhales sharply, staggering back another step. “That was you. That was because of _you_ , wasn’t it? Why I never wondered?”

He opens his mouth, tries to come up with something to say, but the words die on his tongue, and he knows it’s no use. So instead he nods; simple and grave, not bothering to lie to her.

She’ll know if he lies, now. She’ll hear it. _Sense_ it. She’ll know everything about him because they’re one mind instead of two.

“You killed me,” she repeats, half-hysterical. “Then you turned me? I-into one of you? Why would you think I’d want this?”

“I couldn’t just let you die, I-”

“You should’ve,” she says, a sob catching her voice on its way out. Her hand drops back down to her side, the knife going with it. “You should’ve killed me and let me die, I don’t… want to be like this, I-”

He steps forward again. Once more, like a deer on high alert, she perks up, raises the knife accordingly as he approaches – only this time he doesn’t back off, doesn’t shrink away from the knife. He approaches with a palpable fatalism about him, fully accepting of the fact that she could kill him, right here right now, though he doesn’t think she would. She could kill him, one stab through the heart, one and done, and he’d deserve it, probably a million times over. But instead of holding her ground Laurel backs away, more and more, until she’s pressed up against the kitchen wall and there’s nowhere to go – and so she holds out the knife, holds it higher, as he comes to a stop before her, the tip just barely pressing into the fabric of his shirt, right between his ribs.

“If you… come any closer, I’ll kill you, Frank, I-”

“Do it,” he says, unflinching. “Through the heart. Hard. That’s how you gotta do it.”

She’s trembling, every inch of her ratting with terror, horror at what she’s become. Hatred, for him. Sorrow, for the girl she’d lost; her former life, dead and gone but not buried. She stands still for a moment, not budging, still holding the knife to him as if getting ready at any moment to lunge forward, give the killing blow.

But she doesn’t. Instead, with shaking hands, she turns it around, pressing the tip forward against her own chest instead.

“I’ll do it,” she breathes, sniffing. “I… I don’t want to be this way, you… should’ve let me die-”

He’d been fine with her holding a knife to him, calm – but the instant he sees her holding a knife to her own chest, threatening her own life, he panics, eyes widening. Every muscle in his body locks up with fear.

“Put down the knife, Laurel,” he urges, gulping, desperate. “Put it down, okay? Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’ll do it,” she repeats, eyes hollow, suddenly with that same fatalism about her too. “I… I-I’d rather be dead than be whatever _thing_ you made me. I…” Another sob rattles through her, so deep in her bones he can feel its shockwaves in his. “I want to die, I want to be dead, just let me do it… I’ll do it-”

She doesn’t want to. He can sense that too, in her thoughts. He knows she doesn’t want to, knows it’s just a bluff and she won’t – but there’s a tiny nagging part of her mind that signals to him that maybe she would. That maybe she _does_ want to.

“Don’t,” he urges, trying to keep his panic from bleeding into his voice. He lets out a breath, reaching out slowly, very slowly, and extracting the knife from her hands. He goes into her head, too. Trying to exude some kind of calming aura, get her to back down, and when she doesn’t put up any particular kind of fight or jerk away, he knows it’s working at least moderately well. “You’re not gonna do it. You don’t wanna do it, Laurel, I know you don’t. Calm down, okay? It’s okay.”

He sounds like he’s coaxing a scared animal. He supposes that’s exactly what he’s doing. She’s an animal, now. Like him.

Somehow – and he doesn’t know how, not really – he gets the knife away from her, dropping it on the ground with a low _clunk_. For a moment they stand there in silence, the only sound to be heard their heavy breathing and Laurel’s occasional sniffles and sobs. She wipes at her eyes, so broken down and miserable right then that he has half a mind to pick up the knife and finish the job, off himself.

Divine retribution. That’s what it would be. But he knows full well there’s no god watching over them now to dole that out.

“Get out,” she says, finally, voice hard as steel. “Get _out_!”

“Laurel…” He sighs. “There’s… things you gotta understand. ‘Bout us. Let me explain, I-”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she spits, holding up her hands. She takes a step towards him, and it’s menacing enough that he backs up, reflexively. “I don’t need you to tell me anything. Or… help me, or-”

“Hear me out, okay? If you don’t, something’s gonna happen. When you feed. You’ll be stupid-”

“I’m not going to feed. I’m _not_. Now _go_.”

Another step. He backs up. Then another, and another, like a dance, until he’s over by the door and she goes for the doorknob, swinging it open and standing beside it, beckoning him to go. Get out of her sight. He tries to argue, tries to stop her. She’s being stupid, like he’d been when he was a newborn, shrugging off Annalise and Sam and anyone who’d tried to save him from himself and his new, terrifying, insatiable desires.

She’ll get herself into trouble like this, trying to go it alone. That’s how it always happens.

“Laurel-”

“I’ll scream,” she threatens, when he refuses to step over the threshold. “I-I’ll scream, or call the cops, or both. _Go_.”

After a moment, knowing there’s nothing more he can say to convince her, he nods, resigned. And he goes, turning at the last moment before the door closes to look at her; pale skin and dark eyes and teeth barred, fangs just barely coming in, poking through her gums, like the first stubs of an infant’s teeth. He knows she can feel them. He can feel them too.

And he knows he’s committed a murder, right then. Killed Laurel Castillo, made her a godless creature, just like him.  

Godless creatures in a godless place.

 

~

 

He doesn’t make an effort to find her; he knows she’ll come back, seeking guidance. They always do.

She’s hungry. She needs to feed. Somehow, with some sort of unprecedented willpower, she holds out for an entire day after he turns her – though he knows how ravenous newborns are. But she’s not any ordinary newborn, weak-willed and stupid, so she holds out, and he can feel her thirst like it’s his own; feel the headache behind her eyes, the way she shudders with it, starvation. Fear.

All of it. And he knows she can feel him too. And he knows she hates it.

“Stop it,” she hisses the next night, at the office coffee pot; pale and sweaty and shivering with thirst, but otherwise shockingly composed.

He frowns, stopping at her side. “Stop what?”

“Talking to me. In my head. I can _hear_ you.” She clenches her jaw, filling her cup before fixing him with a withering glare; a look that could kill, if he could _be_ killed. “Leave me alone.”

“You think I wouldn’t if I could?” he replies, gravely. “I can hear everything you think too, y’know. And-” He cuts himself off, leaning in closer and lowering his voice, glancing behind himself furtively. “You need to feed, Laurel, you’re goin’ crazy. And it’s only gonna get worse. You can’t fight it-”

“I’m fine,” she snaps, dismissively. “And… no. I don’t need to.” She gulps, fidgeting a little. Restlessness. That’s one of the signs. She meets his eyes nonetheless, jaw clenched. “I’m not like you. I don’t _hurt_ people.”

“If you wait any longer,” he says, voice deep and foreboding, “you’re gonna lose it. You’re not gonna be able to think about anythin’ else, okay? It’s all you think about. And you start to sweat. And… all you can see in people, all you can _smell_ , is their blood. It’s everywhere you go, until finally you give in and attack somebody and drain ‘em until they’re half-dead because you’re starving. You-”

“I’m not,” she repeats, enunciating the words, “going to drink anyone’s blood, okay? I’m _not_.”

“But you want to.” He lets out a breath. “I can feel it. And you gotta.”

“I don’t have to do anything!” she hisses, and glances behind herself too, to ensure no one can hear them. After a moment, she sighs, and takes a step back towards the hallway. “Just… leave me alone. And get out of my head.”

She leaves him with that. But he knows she’ll be back. She will. She’ll be called home to him even if she tries to fight it, called home to her maker. Not her master – he could never be her _master_ and he knows that, and he doesn’t want to be.

If anything she’s _his_ master.

She shows up at half past midnight that night, deathly pale and shaky and ten times worse than she’d been during the day. He opens the door, hardly has time to say anything before she storms in, shucking her coat, fidgeting and pacing and restive. He watches, for a moment, still clad in his suit from work, before he exhales sharply and approaches her.

“Laurel-”

“Don’t let me leave,” she blurts out, pleading. She gulps, gritting her teeth, terrified of the thirst within her, all these new, primal urges; the power it has over her, all-consuming, power she can’t reconcile herself with. “Don’t let me… I-I don’t know what I’ll do if you let me leave.”

“Laurel…”

“Don’t _talk_ ,” Laurel spits, and starts pacing again. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. I didn’t even want to come here but… but I had to, I couldn’t stop myself.” She looks up at him, eyes glistening with tears. “Was that you too? You made me come here?”

“You always come back,” he explains. “To the one who makes you. It’s how it is.”

“Yeah?” she breathes. “And who made you?”

He doesn’t answer. Again, she resumes her pacing, twice as frantic this time, squirming and shifting, unable to stand still. He can feel her skin crawling; it’s like his skin is crawling too, like a million ants are in his veins, skittering about. Her head is pounding. He doesn’t know how she’s resisted this long, restrained herself – but then again he’s always had shitty willpower.

So Frank clenches his jaw, making his way over to his fridge without a word and rummaging in one of the bottom drawers until he finds what he’s looking for: blood. Bottled up, in case of an emergency. He always keeps it handy and something is telling him that this is _very much_ an emergency, and so he holds it out to her, unabashed.

“Here,” is all he says. “Drink.”

Laurel’s upper lip curls in feigned disgust, though he can see her positively salivating at the sight, pupils dialated. Starving. For a moment he thinks she’s going to push him away, refuse, but as it turns out she doesn’t need to be told twice; she lunges forward and swipes it out of his hands so fast it almost startles him. She tips it back, drinking deeply, so greedily and carelessly crimson droplets spill past her lips and tumble down her chin. She makes a sound, too; a half-groan, deep in the back of her throat.

He hates himself, for doing this to her. And he loves her, like this.

He _especially_ hates himself for loving her like this.

She looks vaguely nauseous after she finishes, mouth full of blood. She wipes her mouth off on her forearm, breathing heavily and swaying on her feet; satisfied, for now, but she’ll need more, soon. Newborns are always voracious.

But for now… For now, he’s bought them some time.

“Oh, God,” she pants, sucking in a breath. “Who’s blood was that?”

He raises his eyebrows. “You really wanna know?”

“No,” she manages, after thinking for a moment. “No, actually, don’t tell me. Oh _God_ …” Her breaths are coming faster, harder. “I liked it. I-I _liked_ it. I’m going crazy-”

“You’re not crazy,” Frank lowers his voice, soothing her. He steps forward, and for once she doesn’t move away. “This is who we are.”

They’re silent, for a moment. Laurel shrinks, seems to deflate all at once, and he can feel the anger flood out of her like water, some dam breaking; something fracturing inside her. She lets her guard down and looks at him, for the first time since changing; she looks at him and it’s not with anger, and it’s not with affection, either, but it’s something. Curiosity. A need to understand.

It’s a step. It’s something.

“So we don’t die?” she asks. “Ever?”

He shakes his head, squaring his shoulders. “No.”

“How old are you then?”

“Old.”

“Have you…” She drifts off, timid. “Have you killed people?”

He nods, grim. “Yeah.”

A lot. He doesn’t know how many; like his age, he stopped keeping track years ago.

Shockingly calm, Laurel takes a moment to process that, then swallows. “And this is… why you’d always go out at night, to do things? Run errands for Annalise? Not during the day?”

“We can be in the sun. Won’t kill us, for a bit, but too long and it will.” He pauses, grave. “You’ll be sensitive to it at first. You… you gotta be careful, okay?”

She grinds her teeth, folding her arms. “I haven’t been sleeping, since. I can’t. Every time I try-”

“We don’t sleep.” He shrugs. “Don’t need to.”

Laurel scoffs. “Great. That’s… that’s great. Anything else I should know? I need to avoid churches? Crucifixes? _Garlic_?”

He nods, trying half-heartedly to lighten the mood. “The garlic part sucks, too. You got any idea how hard it is to cook Italian food without garlic?”

“Really?” she sputters, in darkly amused disbelief. “You… y-you drain all my blood and turn me into a literal fucking vampire, and you’re complaining about not being able to properly season your _cooking_?”

“Laurel…”

“You’re selfish,” she accuses, words barbed and sharp. “You’re a selfish _prick_. You didn’t have to do this to me and you did. Made me one of you.” She raises her chin, eyes glassy. “I hate you. I hate you so much.”

He knows that. Knows she’s justified in hating him, but also knows probably no one can ever hate him as much as he hates himself already. He takes a step towards Laurel, and for a moment just takes in the sight of her: pale and slender and dark-eyed, jaw clenched so hard he can feel it in his own teeth. And it suits her, death. It suits her well.

A veritable Hades and Persephone, the two of them – that’s what they are. And if they hadn’t been in the underworld together before they certainly are now.

“Don’t,” she tells him, voice breathy and thick with tears, as he draws closer. He reaches out and she doesn’t flinch but she glares at him, a withering glare. “Don’t touch me-”

“I’m sorry,” is all he can say, though the words fall flat and sound stupid, pointless, not nearly enough to make up for what he’s done. She meets his eyes, still seething but relaxing somewhat, as they stand mere inches apart, but not touching beyond that. “I’ll do anything, to make this right, Laurel. _Please_. Believe me, I will. You gotta believe me.”

He doesn’t beg. Hasn’t had to beg for centuries. But he begs right then, all but ready to throw himself down at her feet and clasp his hands in supplication and beg for her mercy, her forgiveness, even the tiniest table scrap she’ll pity him with. He’d be her slave. Her servant. Indebted to her forever. Bring her bodies, bathe her in blood, as much as she wants. Devote his life to her. _Anything_.

But her answer is hollow. Cold. “It’s too late.”

And she leaves, her thirst sated – for now, at least. And he watches her go, knowing there’s nothing to do but let her. Knowing she’s right.

It is too late.

 

~

 

“Welcome to the family,” Annalise deadpans one afternoon at the office, after assembling him, Bonnie, and Laurel in front of her desk.

It hadn’t taken her long to find out; they can always sense others, on some instinctive, biological level. That, coupled with Laurel’s sudden proclivity for staying indoors during the day and lack of desire to eat the Chinese takeout the others pretty much subsist on, had been more than enough to give it away.

Laurel looks at her, then Bonnie, then him, shaking her head and gulping. “You’re all…?”

Annalise nods. “A law firm of vampires. I apologize, for Frank’s lack of self-control. Two centuries old and he’s still as stupid as he was the day he turned.”

Frank, standing beside her, furrows his brow. “Hey-”

“I don’t want to be in your… family. Or coven. Whatever this thing is.” Laurel exhales sharply. “I want to change back. There has to be a way.”

“A stake through the heart. That’s our only escape,” Annalise says, nonplussed, then sighs. “Thanks to Frank here being unable to keep his fangs to himself, this is your life now. The best thing to do is accept it.” She pauses, looking surprisingly sincere. “And you don’t have to do this alone.”

But Laurel backs away, defiant. “Watch me.”

“Don’t be stupid about this, Laurel-” Bonnie tries to interject, but Laurel’s resolve is steely, unwavering; an unmovable mountain of a girl no one can sway, like always.

“You’re insane. All of you.” Laurel shakes her head, going for the door. “Just… just leave me alone.”

“You picked a stubborn one,” Annalise remarks to him, after she’s gone. She rises to stand and grabs a file on her desk, heading out the door as well but stopping to glance back at him. “Keep an eye on her. Teach her. She’ll come around like they all do.” She pauses, raising a judgmental eyebrow. “And maybe if we’re lucky she won’t have your piss-poor self-control.”

 

~

 

She does come around, eventually, as soon as she’s hungry again. And he teaches her how to hunt. How to feed. Laurel may be an idealist but deep down she’s also a pragmatist, and recognizes it’s necessary for her survival.

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t hate it, though. And quickly, he finds out she _really_ fucking hates it.

Her charade is simple: stop someone on the street, pretend she needs a ride, play to their sympathies by pouting and batting her eyelashes, then hypnotize them, bite, feed until she’s had her fill; quick and precise. She gets startled, the first few times, and almost bolts and gets herself caught. But she gets better, over time. More lethal and more precise, and light years better than he’d been when he was a newborn. _Quiet and dangerous_ , Annalise had always called her, and now he understands the true meaning of that, how deadly Laurel Castillo really is.

But she doesn’t want to be.

She still wants to be _good_. Not hurt anyone. She hates it and he knows it, sees the light in her die a little more each time, sees her assimilate even more into the darkness as it draws her in, and it’s as beautiful a transformation as it is awful, like watching a flower wither before his eyes, give itself over to the hands of death.

“I can’t keep doing this,” she breathes one night, as she stumbles into an alleyway after feeding, where he waits for her, ready to intervene if she loses control. “I can’t, Frank, there… there must be some other way.”

Normally he would smirk, tease her, but she looks so upset he refrains. “Hate to break it to you, but there ain’t exactly any going vegetarian for us.”

“I’m gonna be sick,” she mutters, swallowing and very obviously choking down bile. She stumbles, a bit unsteady, swaying on her feet, and he reaches out to steady her.

“Hey, hey,” he soothes, voice low. “I got you. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” she cries, and jerks herself away from his grip. “I have to… drink people’s blood to survive now – that’s the exact definition of _not_ okay-”

“You wanna yell that any louder?” he snaps. “You’ll get half the damn state out looking for us with torches and pitchforks.”

“There’s gotta be… other ways,” she insists, and wipes at a wayward smear of blood beside her lips. “This can’t be the only one.”

“It is. Unless you wanna go black market, but that shit isn’t cheap.”

Something switches on in her eyes. “The black market for – what? Blood?”

“Yeah, they get it south of the border or something. Don’t wanna know from who. It’s expensive as hell.”

“But you know where to get it?” she asks, wide-eyed, suddenly determined.

He raises his eyebrows, surprised. “You in the mood to drop a couple grand every time you want a midnight snack?”

“I’ll do what I have to do,” Laurel tells him, as certain as he’s ever seen her.

And so she does.                                                                            

A week passes. Two. Eventually she stops hunting altogether, at least as far as he can tell, but she isn’t hungry, and he can only assume she’s brought a supply of blood to sustain her, harvested from God knows where – or _who_. Which he knows, for a fact, is ludicrously expensive; not something even Annalise can afford to do on the regular.

Being a filthy rich vampire has its perks, it turns out.

“So what?” he asks one night, as he walks through her door. “My guy come through for you or not?”

Laurel doesn’t answer; she just walks him over to her refrigerator and yanks open one of the bottom drawers, revealing a veritable smorgasbord of blood bags stowed there. She glances up at him, looking almost proud of her resourcefulness, proud of herself for proving him wrong when he’d said there was no other way for her to feed.

He lets out a low whistle. “Damn. How much all that cost you?”

“A lot,” she says, dismissively, and slides the drawer shut. “Good thing I have a three hundred million-dollar trust fund courtesy of my father.”

“And if daddy dearest notices thousands of dollars goin’ missing every month?”

“Yeah, well, for all I know he’s probably involved with this kind of stuff. The blood trade.” She folds her arms, something like a smile playing at her lips. “And if he does find out I guess I’ll just have to tell him I’ve been changed into a… vicious bloodsucking monster, by another vicious bloodsucking monster who was too much of an asshole to, y’know. Refrain from drinking all the blood in my body and killing me.”

The words are grave but she doesn’t look serious, and he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his slacks, a bit sheepish. “For what it’s worth, you were the best I’ve ever had.”

Laurel scoffs, and reaches for her glass of wine on the counter – only, no. It isn’t wine; it’s too thick to be wine. It’s blood, and she sips it slowly, languidly, and licks her lips when she’s done like she’s savoring every last drop.

She notices him staring, and sighs. “I’m getting used to it. The taste.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She nods, setting the glass down. “At least… it doesn’t make me feel sick anymore.”

He looks at her, in silence, not giving an answer. She looks so gorgeous he can hardly breathe; dark hair, pale skin, tight grey dress, more centered in herself, accepting of her new form, and he’s said it before but he means it: death looks good on her. Darkness, too, like she was meant for this all along.

Meant to live in this darkness with him.

Before he can think it through he’s making his way over to her and coming to a stop, so close he almost looms over her, and she holds his gaze, undaunted, fearless, something like lust flashing in her eyes, which glint with all sorts of dark colors, red as rubies then blue as sapphires before settling on black obsidian, black as the night. Enchanting.

“I’m sorry, Laurel,” he undertones, sincere. She lowers her eyes, and he moves in closer, so close he waits to feel her heart beating, then remembers that he won’t – ever again. “I didn’t… I didn’t want this for you. And I know that doesn’t mean anything, but-”

“Don’t apologize,” she says, and meets his eyes, shaking her head. Her breath hitches and he can hear it, and he can hear her thoughts, feel the desire pooling low in her belly like it pools in his. They’re in sync, perfectly, like they might as well be one creature instead of two, and he’s made people before but never felt anything like this; this closeness beyond closeness, this twisted sort of intimacy. She swallows, and color rises to her cheeks. “What’s done is done. And there’s no going back, like you said.”

“I know,” Frank tells her, drawing her closer. She fits against him so naturally, so easily, so small a girl but so powerful. “Yeah, I know.”

They’re silent, a moment. She wants to kiss him and he knows it. He wants to kiss her and _she_ knows it – yet neither of them budge, even though everything feels all aflame around him, like thirst for human blood but different. A psychic connection. He can hear everything she thinks, can feel the quickening of her breath, the beading of sweat on her forehead.

“I just… I miss feeling things. _Anything_ ,” she admits, finally, breaking the silence. She looks up at him, pupils huge and black, dialated with wanting. She licks her bloody lips, and moves in, moves closer, until her lips are just barely brushing his, and her voice is a whispered plea when it comes out. “Make me feel something again, Frank, please.”

He can’t tell her no – of course he can’t. He’s her servant, now. As good as her slave. He’ll do anything for her.

And he can’t tell her _no_. Now or ever again.

He’s upon her in seconds, relentless. He kisses her hard, so hard it makes her squeak in surprise, so hard it maybe bruises her lips, makes her ache. Make her _feel_ – that’s what she wants, and that’s what he does. He knows what she means; they can feel, maybe, but it’s half of what it was like before, dulled and numbed. They’ve lost their perceptions of normal human contact, of touch. But they can still feel.

They can still feel _this_.

He has her up against the wall in seconds, not bothering to unzip her dress and toss it aside. He yanks her panties down like a madman and lifts her up and wraps her thin legs around him, holding her there, and unzipping his slacks and freeing his cock and fucking into her. And he sets a brutal pace; almost punishing, stretching her savagely and leaving her no time to adjust to his girth. To a human he’d sure it would be agony.

To monsters like them it feels just right.

She screams. Sobs. She wraps her arms around him, fingernails pressing into the back of his neck, punctuating the pleasure with pain. It’s not like it used to be, fucking her: slow and with the pretense of tenderness, pretending to be some gentle creature he was not, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. With her he unleashes, goes mad. With her he’s _himself_ – all the man and all the monster, fucking her, all but slamming her into the wall with each thrust. Making her _his_. He boils beneath his skin and he can feel her orgasm tightening between her legs, careening into her, all that delicious pent-up pressure. She’d asked him to make her feel, and he will.

If he’s anything he’s a man of his word.

“Laurel,” he growls, face buried in her neck, feeling her cold skin on his. “ _Fuck_ , Laurel-”

“Harder,” she insists, gritting her teeth, desperate. Desperate to feel. “ _Harder_!”

He obliges. He’s drubbing her, now. Pummeling her with his cock, each thrust ruthless. She isn’t showing any signs of pain; quite the opposite, and after a few moments of this new, frenzied pace she leans in, lips on his neck, before releasing her fangs and sinking them into him. It surprises him more than anything else, and he gives a low, guttural moan, on the brink of coming and so close, so close he can taste it. And _her_. He can taste the blood on her tongue, in their kiss. This is his idea of paradise, if he had to come up with one. Dark, decaying, blood-soaked paradise.

She bites him, and he bites back – and that’s all it takes to make her unravel, split apart into pieces and fragment and cry out so loud that it he swears it echoes off the walls, otherworldly; like the scream of a banshee, harbinger of death. She comes and he can feel it, in his bones, his skin, flashing behind his eyes, feel everything she does amplified tenfold. It’s as good as coming himself and when he finally lets go, and spills hot inside her a minute later, it’s like he’s gone two rounds in one.

They don’t feel as much, like this, but somehow, sometimes, especially like this, God, they feel so much _more_.

Frank pulls out, after a moment, and draws back, and lets her down on shaky legs. He has to reach out to keep her from falling, her head lolling to one side, giving him a hazy, loopy grin; looking well and thoroughly fucked, like she should.

“Well,” he quips, after a moment, running his eyes over her: dress still hiked up, shaky and shivering but satisfied. He smirks, and kisses her. Kisses her deep. “Welcome to eternity, princess.”

 

~

 

She comes to him again, the night Sam Keating dies for the second time.

He can feel it, the exact moment when the connection severs, when some force unmakes the man who’d been his maker. He can feel it all over, like he’s being splintered open from his head to his toes, every inch of his skin peeled off, acid chewing his flesh away and dissolving it off the bone. It feels like turning, all over again, but somehow there’s a maturity to it; a sense of adulthood. Coming into his own. _Emancipation_. There’s a ringing in his ears, so loud and so sudden, and yelling, and Sam’s thoughts bombarding him from every angle, frantic and echoing and building, building, building to a crescendo until finally-

It stops. It explodes; a sonic boom in his head that makes him crumple into a heap on the floor, hands clasped over his ears, skull boiling hot, pressurized like a volcano. There’s that ringing – that deafening ringing that won’t stop. Not coming from any external place. Coming from _inside_ him.

Where once Sam’s thoughts had been now there’s nothing.

Where once Sam’s thoughts had been now there’re only Laurel’s. And he hears her. And he knows what she’s done long before she’s even arrived at his doorstep, shivering in her filthy grey coat, face coated with ashes, teary-eyed.

He’s sweaty and shaking and still in agony when he pulls open the door, just barely managing to rasp a faint, “Hey.”

She gives him a look, long and tired and tortured. And she invites herself in without invitation, plopping down onto his couch like a lead weight, with something in her bag that really _does_ sound like a lead weight hitting the coffee table with a deep, metallic _clunk_. She doesn’t say anything at first, just sits there, mute, eyes distant, and he doesn’t need her to. He can hear her.

He can always hear her.

Still, he gives her at least the formality of a terse: “What’d you do?”

“Sam,” she chokes out his name even though he knows already, and exhales, shivering. “We… we went to the house. The office. Rebecca was… doing something. Trying to find evidence against him. And things… got out of hand – and-” Something cuts her off, clogging her throat. She shakes her head, picking at a hangnail on her finger, and he watches blood seep to the surface, black as the night. “We pushed him over the stairs. And he came back, he… He tried to kill her. And Wes hit him with the trophy, and still he wouldn’t… he was so _strong_ , he wouldn’t stop a-and then I remembered. What you said, about us dying.” Finally, she drags her eyes up to his, looking so pained, matching his own pain. “I stabbed him through the heart. And he fell and he… he stopped moving.”

“The body,” he says, wiping the sweat from his forehead, mind still buzzing, still struggling to acclimate itself to the severed connection; the silence. “You burned it?”

“We cut him up,” she admits, lowly. “And put him in dumpsters, around the city. That was my idea.” Laurel pause, swallowing thickly, shaking her head. “I’ve been reading. You have to scatter our bodies, right? So there’s no chance we come back?”

“Yeah,” is all he says, grave. “Yeah. Good thinkin’.”

“I killed someone,” she blurts out suddenly, horrified. “I… I _killed_ someone, Frank-”

“Yeah, well,” he quips, his inhibitions gone, body sagging, all the energy sapped out of him suddenly, “it’ll be the first of many. Get used to it.”

“How can you-” she starts to hiss, then stops when she sees him put a hand to his head, wincing. She moves closer to him on the couch, furrowing her brow. “What’s wrong? What’s… I can feel it too, Frank, what’s wrong?”

He considers lying. Thinks maybe there’s some tiny sliver of a chance he could pull it off, convince her that it’s nothing, but ultimately he decides against it. She’s his partner, now, reluctant or not. Some twisted, fucked-up version of his soulmate. His queen.

She can know him. She _needs_ to know him.

“Sam,” he chokes out, gritting his teeth through the pain and closing his eyes. “He… made me. And I can’t hear him anymore, I-” A surge passes through him. His head feels like it’s liable to burst, split in two like a melon until whatever minimal brains he has left come spilling out. “It’ll be… over soon. I’m fine.”

“You’re not _fine_ ,” she asserts, jaw clenched, and moves closer to him on the couch. When he still won’t look at her, will only place his hands on his temples and close his eyes and grit his teeth, she moves in front of him, sinking down onto her knees but raising herself up enough to press her forehead against his. And her eyes are still teary but suddenly they’re resolute, razor-sharp, tender. She can feel his pain too, feel it bubbling in her veins, he knows she can. But she raises her chin, so strong, undaunted. So much stronger than he’s ever been and ever _will_ be. “What can I do?”

“Just-” He bites back a groan, letting his hands drop down from his temples, letting her hands take their place on the sides of his cheeks. “Just… keep thinkin’. It helps. Drowns it out.”

So she does. She thinks – not even of anything in particular, not anything of real importance, but somehow it works nonetheless, stifles the screeching in his ears, replacing it with calm. And her thoughts aren’t words, not any sort of tangible things. He can’t explain what they feel like – but she presses her forehead against his and suddenly all he knows is that everything goes strikingly still, all her chaos canceling out all of his. It quiets the noise. Gives him blessed silence. She’s always been the quiet one, the wallflower, and now she’s bestowing her silence upon him too.

And he’s never been so grateful for a gift.

She pulls back, once they both know it’s over, and looks at him, unsmiling. Just looking at him. “It’s done.”

“Yeah,” he finds his voice and mumbles, letting out a breath. The pain is gone, now. The raging seas of his mind have gone still and now there’s just her, only her, her calming tide washing over him. “Yeah, it’s over.”

They’re silent, for a moment. Then-

“Sam,” Laurel remarks softly, grimly. “He made you?”

He nods, wordlessly. She frowns, urging him to look her in the eyes but finding he evades her somehow, over and over.

“Tell me how,” she says, with an edge to her voice that makes it clear the matter isn’t up for debate. “Tell me what happened.”

And so he does. And once he starts talking he doesn’t seem to be able to stop himself.

He tells her about prison. Sam. Meeting Sam and being dragged from the gutter like the worthless no-good son of a bitch he was. Sam turning him. Making him his dog – and Annalise’s. The things they’d both made him do. All he’s ever known is servitude. Bondage. Living in a cage, like something nonhuman, kicked and beaten over and over yet every time, every single _goddamn_ time, still willing to crawl back to his masters because he knew nothing else. Part of him expects Laurel to break down, cry for him, for all his tragedy. But he should know better, because she doesn’t.

She holds his gaze, strong and steady, and listens. So strong and sure, so centered in herself; terrified of what she’s done, what he’s done and somehow, somehow, unafraid. Unafraid of him, and for the first time unafraid of _herself,_ her own power.

“He’s gone, now,” she remarks, after he’s done, after his mouth has run dry of words and he has none left to give her. “You’re free?”

 _Free_. If his heart was beating he thinks it might’ve skipped a little, at that. Free.

He’s never had _free_. Never felt freedom – not really.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, head heavy, body aching. The sun is coming up and he can feel the rays dripping on his skin through the blinds, white-hot, forming faint blisters. “Yeah, guess I am.” He pauses, and manages a smirk to give her, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I, uh, got you to thank for that, don’t I?”

“Don’t,” she says, shaking her head, suddenly just as weary as he is, like his exhaustion is channeling into her too, leeching the life from her. She sighs, and settles herself back onto her legs, heaving a sigh. “Just… don’t.”

Frank nods. He understands.

And he won’t. Not today, anyway.

“C’mon,” he tells her, and something manages to haul himself to his feet. She rises with him, eyeing the sunlight with similar contempt. “Sun’s comin’ up, and we ain’t morning people. Let’s get you washed off and in bed.”

Laurel nods, slowly. And she doesn’t take his hand when she follows, doesn’t hug or kiss him or loop her arm through his – doesn’t give him any sort of meager physical affirmation that she’s there because he doesn’t need it. They both know. They both know she’s with him, that she’ll always be with him.

She smiles, when he steps into the shower with her, fangs and dark eyes and all. She looks feral under the spray of the water, dark but dark and beautiful. _Angel_ , he thinks again. Angel of death. Goddess of destruction and patron saint of blood.

Well, he figures, maybe _saint_ isn’t exactly the right word.

But she’s good and evil and _his_. She’s his. And he’s never really wanted this gift of eternal life, before; always lived with it like a curse, like damnation, or at best a minor annoyance. He’s never particularly wanted eternity, lifetime after lifetime, but he wants it now.

He wants it, and he wants it with her.

 

~

 

Years pass. She grows into her new life. Flowers like a black rose, more ravishing by the decade.  

And she takes his hand, a ruby-red smile on her lips. And they carry on to eternity together.


End file.
